


to call it courage

by mimosaeyes



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 06:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17861696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: Amaya stays by Sarai’s side as they carry her the whole, long way home.Set after the flashback in 2x06.





	to call it courage

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Earth by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> In his letter to Callum, Harrow says, “I now believe true strength is found in vulnerability, in forgiveness, in love.” This fic is about the strength Amaya finds in love, and how she shares it.

Amaya insists that one of her wounded men lie down on their only wagon as a makeshift gurney. Her own injuries aren’t serious, only painful; pain is manageable, especially now that they’ve crossed the border into Katolis. Home.  

She gives up her mount for another soldier, walking alongside with one arm on the mare’s neck — both to calm her and to seek support from her. With her other arm, she holds her ribs, still aching with each step and breath she takes. Her horse gives her a whuffling nuzzle, which makes her smile then wince, bleeding in a thin trickle from the fresh laceration on her cheek.

Murmurs begin to travel up their straggly line. She can see their effect: everyone around her is drawing to a stop and turning around toward the back of the loose group. Amaya turns too, her heart lifting. Perhaps the two queens of Duren made it back through the Breach after all. Thunder was mighty, but Annika and Neha were forces to be reckoned with.

Whatever the source of the fuss is, it’s obscured from Amaya’s sight by the clumps of people standing in the way, and frustratingly, nobody is enunciating well or facing her direction; she can’t get a clear view of anyone’s lips. She glances rapidly from person to person, catching what could be the word _queen_. Had only one of them survived? 

The soldier on her horse taps urgently on her shoulder. Amaya looks up at him, and with sudden clarity reads the expression on his face.

Then she’s running back down the path, and people are parting for her, and their faces say it all but her heartbeat thuds _No no no_ in the pit of her stomach. _No no no_  but then she’s here, where King Harrow is sprawled on the ground cradling her sister to his chest, his shoulders shaking with sobs that Amaya cannot hear. He looks up at her approach and Sarai’s head falls limply back against his arm. Her eyes are closed. He shakes his head ever so slightly.

That snake Viren is looking at her and saying something, insolently, even at this moment. She shoves past him and falls to her knees next to Sarai. She fumbles for her; Harrow shifts so that Sarai lies between them, her back supported by both their arms. Amaya’s tears spill out of her eyes, hot and stinging. She reaches out a hand to touch Sarai’s cheek. It’s not quite cold yet.

Amaya’s face crumples, and as her crying escalates into wracking sobs she looks at Harrow in shock and confusion. _But she was safe_ , she wants to protest. The words are almost petulant, like that of a hurt child. _I saw her and she was right with you, and she was safe._

Harrow holds her gaze through both their tears. _But she went back_ , his eyes say.

And Amaya hugs her big sister’s body to herself and screams at Thunder, at the insipid dawn sky and at the uncaring mountains. The way her voice catches in her throat, it must sound hoarse from lack of use, and raw, and jagged. It tears out of her.

 

 

 

King Harrow has to walk at the front of the procession when they re-enter the city. He has to be seen by his people; he has to be their king first, and a grieving husband second.

Amaya stays by Sarai’s side as they carry her the whole, long way home.

 

 

 

And she continues to stay by her sister’s side, until Opeli comes looking for her to tell her that Harrow is breaking the news to Callum.

She’s been standing stock-still for hours, breathing shallowly to avoid triggering the pain in her side, ignoring the tightening feeling as the cut on her cheek begins scabbing over. She hasn’t let any doctors near her. But Amaya nods, washes as much blood off her face as she can with water from the well, and goes to her nephew in his room. 

Callum isn’t frightened by the sight of the injury, though; only concerned. And his eyes are so different from Sarai’s, but when he touches her cheek tentatively and furrows his brow, he somehow looks just like her. 

_I’m sorry_ , she signs after a long moment, and Callum, whose eyes are already slightly puffy, begins crying again, his face scrunching up.

She immediately pulls him into a hug. It hurts her ribs to lean forward on his bed like this, but she does anyway. All the while thinking, absurdly, that it should be his mother comforting him now.

Finally she pulls back, just far enough to ask _Should I get your dad?_

And Callum tells her that Harrow is trying to soothe Ezran, who is throwing his first tantrum ever. He seems to be crying because he wants his mother.

 

 

 

Thanks to Viren’s spell, over the traditional seven days of mourning for fallen rulers, warmth spreads throughout the two kingdoms of Katolis and Duren. It defies their bereavement by bringing greens and reds and yellows back to the landscape. And it does keep some spirits up, reminding the people that their queen’s sacrifice was not in vain.

But the cheerier the trees look, the more wintry Amaya feels.

Viren seems to be everywhere in these first few days, helping to organise the lines for people to pay their respects to Queen Sarai. He does it out of obligation and perhaps even genuine sorrow, but Amaya feels no qualms about steadfastly ignoring him. He is good for one thing, though: temporary escape from pain into anger, and indignation. Even if afterwards, she feels the need to apologise to her sister, because hating Viren for having survived when she didn’t seems almost like disrepect for the choice Sarai made.

She doesn’t blame Harrow for letting Sarai go, not by a long shot, but at least for a while, she thinks, it will be hard to look him in the eyes.

 

 

 

Ezran won’t stop crying. 

Grief slides naturally from the dramatic to the banal, so even though it still feels like a hole has been punched through her chest, Amaya’s tears eventually run dry. But Sarai’s younger son is so little. Amaya thought his age would spare him from missing her, but the boy is sensitive, and his grief obstinate in the endearing, heartbreaking way children have.

He only wails at the start; afterwards he subsides into a choking sort of crying that frightens Amaya the first few times — she’s not experienced with babies, and worries he is struggling to breathe. Then it just saddens her, because it means that Ezran is not crying for attention, but because he cannot help himself.

She and Harrow take it in turns to rock him, soothe him, even bribe him with jelly tarts. If it is possible for a baby to look affronted, Ezran does when they try that last one.

Harrow is busy coordinating the mourning arrangements for Sarai, and liaising with Duren via crow to share their coming harvest equitably. For all his kingly composure he looks increasingly ragged, and yet he never once loses patience with Ezran, or hands him off for a nursemaid to deal with.

On the morning of the fifth day, Harrow is speaking in an undertone with Opeli when Ezran stirs in his arms and begins to wail again. Amaya steps forward out of reflex, only to see Callum stride quickly over from the other side of the room. He reaches up to his baby brother and Harrow, eyebrows raised, gently places Ezran in Callum’s tiny arms.

With a nod at Harrow, Amaya follows Callum out of the room. To her confusion, he makes his way to the royal garden.

Callum walks around the newly budding flowers, letting Ezran reach out to touch them, and pauses for a solid five minutes apparently so that Ezran can listen to a small family of birds chitter in their nest. After that, Ezran doesn’t cry anymore, although occasionally he whines if he needs to be apart from Callum for too long.

 

 

 

At the end of the week, she stands next to Opeli while the other woman lights the funeral pyre. Callum holds Ezran, and Harrow holds both of them. They start the ceremony before dawn, when the dark sky reminds Amaya all too much of the moment Thunder first blocked the sunlight.

Amaya stays until the pyre burns down.

Then she walks away, and keeps walking until she finds her commanding officer and reports for duty. Hands shaking, but only slightly, she requests a posting to the Breach. Where the lay of the land will remind her every day of the place her sister fell. Where she will be far away from her remaining family. But they have each other, and pain is not manageable but survivable — she knows this now — and she resolves she will lose no one else she loves to Xadia.

Because that is _her_ sacrifice. For Katolis. For Sarai.

**Author's Note:**

> I worry about how cruel that opening scene is. But if Amaya had known that Sarai went back for Viren, I know she would have gone back for her sister, no matter her orders.
> 
> Yes, the ‘not crying for attention, but because he cannot help himself’ line comes from the Eleventh Doctor.
> 
> To encourage me to continue procrastinating on real life by writing fic in this fandom, consider reblogging my [tumblr link post](http://mimosaeyes.tumblr.com/post/182934603107/to-call-it-courage-mimosaeyes-the-dragon), which contains some additional notes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] to call it courage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18788290) by [b_9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_9/pseuds/b_9)




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